On Tap Award: Fifteen Minutes of Fame
This one is always a tough one for me, as there are inevitably too many choices.
I was planning to select Ron Paul, but my wife said she didn’t want all of his wacko supporters picketing our house.
So instead, I’m naming former Durham County, North Carolina District Attorney Mike Nifong.
Nifong, you might recall, was the overzealous prosecutor who lead the witch hunt of three Duke University lacrosse players after a stripper falsely accused them of sexual assault.
Though most of the story happened last year, Nifong’s moment of humiliation finally came just last June. After an investigation, the North Carolina Bar expelled Nifong and revoked his license to practice law. Days before their ruling was announced, Nifong resigned in disgrace from his prosecutorial post.
Nifong is now facing civil lawsuits from all three of the students and has at last dropped largely out of the public eye.
Jim: I was very tempted to say Alberto Gonzales, because barring him getting indicted over some sort of wrongdoing at the Department of Justice, he will never be heard from again.
But I think I’m going to go with Scott McClellan, the most strikingly ineffective White House press secretary in recent memory. He has a book coming out next year, in which he says the statements he made regarding Rove and Libby were untrue. It will be one last hurrah, one last round of interviews, for an underwhelming guy, the most awkward pairing of an individual and a role since Bernie Kerik was nominated to head Homeland Security. (Google “Scott McClellan” and “deer in headlights” and you get 1,100 matches.)
Cam: Jeez, who hasn’t had their 15 minutes this year?
Okay, how about Kim Kardashian. I think that’s her name. I’ve seen her start to appear on the cover of tabloids, who I guess are in need of a new rich bimbo to talk about (because Paris is soooo last year). She is (I’m guessing), the daughter of Robert Kardashian, who (again, going on memory here) is a celebrity attorney in California.
So we have the daughter of a lawyer in California who has her own reality show about the awesomeness of being the daughter of a lawyer in California. Remind me again why I’m paying for my daughter to go to college?